Verizon sold 2.2 million iPhones in two weeks

Mark Raby, 21st April 2011

It's like giving the mobile carrier a license to print money.

While there may not have been huge lines on launch day to buy the Verizon iPhone, it has without a doubt become a resounding success for the service provider. The company, which put its version of the popular Apple phone on sale in February, previously remarked it was the most successful phone launch ever for Verizon.

However, until now, it would not provide any specific sales numbers. As part of the company's quarterly earnings report, it recorded 2.2 million units sold in just its first week on the market.

The real test will be later this year, when we can compare an entire quarter's worth of data about how many iPhones were sold through AT&T and how many were sold through Verizon.

That number is likely to be weighed in AT&T's favor for some time, as legacy iPhone customers have already become acclimated to AT&T. But if a trend starts to develop where AT&T iPhone sales decline and Verizon iPhone sales start to increase, it could spell bad news for the former carrier.

Also of note is the HTC Thunderbolt, which went on sale last month, sold 260,000 units. It's the first, and so far only, phone to run on Verizon's 4G LTE network, regarded as the fastest mobile network in the country.

And now, a majority of all phones sold by Verizon are smartphones. They accounted for 60% of all phone sales last quarter. In 2010, smartphones were only 36% of the equation.